Beauty for Ashes (17 page)

“Murray, will you bring them over in the morning?” he asked.

“I surely will,” said Murray with satisfaction. “Maybe I’ll plant a corn or two myself.”

“All right, then come over about ten thirty,” said Carroll, “and when we lay off at noon, we’ll have a picnic lunch under the tree. I warn you it won’t be much, but I can rustle up some bacon sandwiches and we can build a fire out of doors and toast them. There’ll be strawberries, too, eaten from their stems. That’s about all I can promise you.”

“Oh, we don’t want to make you all that trouble,” said Gloria earnestly, “we’ll hinder your work. We don’t need to stay but five minutes just to see what you do.” She was beginning to be really vexed with her sister. Did Vanna think this young man was just another one to be conquered? Or did she think because he was a farmer she could just wind him around her finger for a while and then toss him aside?

But Vanna spoke up. “Indeed, five minutes will not be long enough. I want to know just how planting corn is done. And I adore toasted sandwiches made out in the open.”

“We could pack you a lunch,” suggested Mrs. MacRae.

“No,” said Robert Carroll, lifting his chin in a pleasant but firm smile, “if I’m going to be favored with guests, I prefer to entertain them myself in my own style. Of course I can’t compete with any lunch you would fix, my dear Mrs. MacRae, but this is my party, and they’ll have to put up with what I can give them.”

They had more music before they went home, singing with both instruments and Vanna playing tender little interludes as if she were thoroughly in the spirit of things, yet Gloria watched her furtively and wondered. She had never seen her sister in this mood before.

Back in their rooms at last, the girls were both quiet. Vanna was occupying the room, just back of her sister’s and there was a communicating door between. Gloria could hear Vanna going about the room putting away her things, putting on slippers and nightgown, and finally she came and stood in the doorway.

“Well,” she said, her face gravely sober, “what do you make of them? You’ve seen them longer than I have. Are they real?”

“Real?” said Gloria, wheeling about upon her sister. “Why of course they’re
real!
Had you any question of it?”

“I wanted to get your reaction,” said the older sister. “You’ve had more chance to study them.”

“One doesn’t have to study them. One has to adjust oneself to a new point of view!” said Gloria thoughtfully.

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Vanna gravely, “but, why bother? There surely can’t be more like them in the whole universe, can there? And if one should really get adjusted, wouldn’t it make one dissatisfied with the rest of the world?”

“Maybe!” said Gloria with a sigh, sitting slowly on the edge of her bed. “I guess that’s about what it does do.”

Vanna gave her sister a sharp glance. “Don’t you think we had better pack up and go home in the morning?” she asked after studying Gloria for a moment.

Gloria sat up sharply. “I thought you were so eager to learn to plant corn!”

Vanna tapped her toe on the old-fashioned carpet. “Well, I thought it would be interesting to see a man like that in his own environment once,” she said. “That ought to be a test of his genuineness, oughtn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Gloria dreamily, “if that were his real environment. That’s only a side issue with him. He earns his living by it. I’ve seen him in his real environment, his spiritual environment, where he’s working out what he was put into this world for, and I don’t need any convincing, for I
know!”

Vanna looked at her in wonder and with a kind of wistfulness. “What is ‘real environment’?” she asked curiously.

Gloria was still a long time, and then she answered, “I’m not going to tell you, Vanna. If you stay here long enough, you’ll probably see for yourself. Vanna Sutherland, if you’re going to try any of your tricks on either of those two men, believe me I’ll do something about it! They’re not like the men we’ve known. They’re not game to be shot and hung at our belts. They’re men, and they’re real! If you’re going to make fun of them, I won’t stand for it.”

Vanna surveyed her sister in stern amazement. “What do you think I am, Gloria Sutherland? Do you think I’m going around collecting scalps or something? Don’t you think I can appreciate true worth when I see it, even if I don’t belong in the same class?”

“Well,” said Gloria, only half appeased, “anybody who is willing to go around with Emory Zane when you know what he is—”

“I haven’t said I was willing, have I? Didn’t I come off here in the wilds to get away from him, where I could think it over and find out just what I do think? And now because I’m trying to get your reaction to these two who are so different from anything I’ve ever even heard of before, you accuse me of making fun of them!”

“I’m sorry, Van, only I didn’t know just where you stood. And I don’t know what I think about them, only I won’t have them made fun of.”

“Well, I’m convinced from all you say that it’s rather dangerous to be in their company long. Perhaps we’d better give up planting corn and stick around here and read the classics out of that old bookcase downstairs,” said Vanna solemnly.

“Don’t be a fool, Van! I’m learning things, and you can, too, if you’ll take it in the right way. Our father was brought up to lots of things we’ve never had, and I think we ought to understand them a little at least. These men have somehow mysteriously got the secret Dad knew once, and I want to know it, too.”

“Exactly!” said Vanna. “Interesting but dangerous! However, I’ll stick around and take care of you, Glory. I know my duty when I see it!”

“Oh, stop talking about it, Van, and go to bed. We’ve had a pleasant afternoon and evening, anyway, haven’t we?”

“Too pleasant for one’s peace of mind,” said Vanna, half laughing. “Really, darling, it’s been gorgeous. I never dreamed anything so simple could be so nice. Now get to bed and don’t look so troubled. I’ll say this, anyhow, I’m glad you came up here! And I’m glad I came, too! Good night!”

V
anna came home from the corn planting sweetly thoughtful and spoke no more of insincerity or doubtful questionings.

They had had a glorious time. The day had been perfect. Each of them had ridden the corn planter once around the field and had the thrill of watching it perform its intricate function with speed and accuracy. They asked questions that would have astonished a scientist and made an old farmer laugh, but they were tremendously interested and had an immense respect when they came away for a young man who was willing to give up a city career, bury himself in the wilderness, and get down to hard work.

They had gone through the old farmhouse, only a small wing of which Robert Carroll was using for himself, the rest being entirely empty, and had admired the spacious rooms and the pleasant outlook. Vanna had stood for a long moment alone at one of the upstairs windows, looking off to the bright hills and wondering how it would seem to be the mistress of that house and live there with none of the gaieties in her life that she had always had. Then Robert Carroll came over to the window and smiled down upon her, and the drab outlook suddenly grew bright.

“You know, it isn’t really just a game I’m playing,” he said, and his tone was strangely deep and significant.

She looked up, startled, as if he had read her thoughts.

“We don’t have picnics under the trees every day, nor strawberries and a group of friends. There are cold days and dark days and lonely days and a year’s round of work whether one feels like it or not.”

Was he trying to make her understand the difference between her world and his? Vanna looked off to the quiet hills and felt a wrenching of her heart. What was there about this young man that so intrigued her? It was powerful. She must get away from it. She did not belong in this world, and it was casting a spell over her.

Yet she lingered a long time at the window talking, trying to find out the secret of the peace in this young man’s life, while down on the front porch Gloria and Murray MacRae were poring over a small, limp Bible that Murray carried in his pocket.

It was a bright simple day, full of wholesome activity and restful talk, but its results were far reaching.

A few days later at the dinner table, Mrs. Sutherland demanded the attention of her abstracted husband to a letter that Vanna had written her.

“Charles, there’s something I must speak to you about at once. Do give me your attention for a few minutes. I’m worried nearly to death,” she said in a tone that her husband knew meant business.

“Worried?” he said vaguely, lifting questioning eyes across the table, just as though he was not worrying himself these days and nights all the time. “What is the matter now?”

“Why, I’ve had a letter from Vanna,” she announced, unfolding one of Vanna’s brief scrawls, two words to a line, three lines to a page. “It’s high time those girls came home and we three can go off to some really respectable place for the rest of the summer. If you can’t go with us, at least we three can go. Listen!” She lifted Vanna’s letter and began to read:

The indignant mother lifted her eyes to her husband’s face. “There, Charles, what do you think of that? It seems to me the limit has been reached! Your daughters, reared to refinement, riding on a farm machine for planting corn. Gloria and Evangeline Sutherland planting corn!”

“Well, what is the matter with that?” asked the annoyed head of the house with his mind eager to return to knotty problems of the morrow. “They’ve ridden on bicycles and wild horses and even tried airplanes a little; why shouldn’t they do so simple a thing as plant corn? I’m sure I am glad if they can get down to simple, healthful things for a little while and learn how the world lives and grows.”

“Charles!” his wife fairly snorted—if one can use so plebeian a word for a cultured Bostonian wife. “How pitiful that you cannot understand! It only goes to show that one never overcomes the initial environment! You cannot see the difference between riding on fine horses at the riding club or hunt and driving a corn-planting machine through a muddy field! Oh,” she moaned, “what a sight they will be when they get back!”

“My dear, one doesn’t plant corn in the mud,” informed her husband quietly. “Your agricultural knowledge is somewhat at fault.”

“No!” said the comely matron, sighing deeply. “Thank goodness I wasn’t brought up on a farm! It’s something one doesn’t get over. And that is the very reason why I think the girls should come home at once! I want you to call them up this evening and order them home immediately! As carefully as we have brought them up, to have them exposed to such common things at this impressionable time of their lives! Those girls are both like you, Charles, and I’m afraid they’re reverting to type. I couldn’t stand it to have that happen to them after all their brilliant prospects! To think of Gloria just on the eve of a splendid marriage!”

“Mother!
Can you say that, after what happened?”

“Now, Charles, don’t be absurd. You know the Asher family is beyond reproach and socially about as high as one can get around here. No family is more respected, and everybody counted that a brilliant marriage. It’s absurd to hold a moment of weakness against poor Stan. It wasn’t Stan’s fault that he got shot by some low-down creature that wasn’t fit to live on the same earth with him. Poor Stan!”

“Adelaide! Stop that sentimental patter!” said her husband indignantly. “It was Stan’s fault that he was shot in the company he was in, and you know it! I feel that Gloria was providentially saved from a life of sorrow. If you can bewail her fate when you know all the circumstances, then I cannot understand a mother’s heart.”

“No, you can’t understand a mother’s heart, Charles!” said his wife furiously. “You think it is pleasant to plan and work and sacrifice to put children into their proper sphere in life and then see everything upset by a whim. Gloria sent off to play childishly in the fields, making mud pies to forget her trouble that she ought to sit up and face like a woman and get over as quickly as she can, and Vanna sacrificing her whole summer and perhaps her life’s fortune to be with her! It is absurd. It is unspeakable. I don’t suppose that you know that Vanna was probably on the eve of making a brilliant engagement, did you, when you ordered her off to that outlandish farm town to care for her sister?”

“No,” said the father wearily, “what brilliant marriage was Vanna meditating?”

“Well,” said his wife, preening herself reproachfully, turning her head so that the long jet and pearl eardrops twinkled and one of them dropped on her white shoulder, “you’ve been so absorbed in business lately that you haven’t paid the slightest attention to what was going on in the heart of our family, but Vanna has made a brilliant conquest. A really distinguished man of the world has been deeply devoted to her ever since Gloria went away. It’s strange you haven’t noticed, even abstracted as you are! He has been here almost constantly, until she went away, and it really was very unwise for her to have gone. I am sure only stern duty would have allowed her to accede to your request! I don’t suppose you in the least realized, but a girl doesn’t have a devoted beau like this one often. Rich, distinguished, cultured, traveled! They say he has been all over the world and visited intimately with the nobility of Europe. He—!”

Mr. Sutherland raised his hand in protest. “Who is this paragon of a man, may I ask?”

His wife pronounced the name impressively. “Mr. Emory Jarvis Zane!”

“You don’t mean that hound of an Emory Zane?” roared the incensed father.

“Now, Charles, if you are going to start being abusive!” said his wife offendedly. “Every time I speak of somebody, you take a dislike to him at once. Just because I tell you how wonderful he is!”